The True Meaning Behind Requiem For A Dream

Released in 2000, “Requiem for a Dream” is regarded as one of the most disturbing cult films. It brutally explores the harshness of drug addiction without giving people any hope. The haunting imagery, unconventional cinematography, sharp editing, elevating music, and a significant theme that is worth reflecting on for a long time, all make “Requiem for a Dream” a masterpiece and undoubtfully Darren Aronfsky’s best work.

Here I hope to convey exactly what the director is trying to say by analyzing some of the details of the film that could have been carelessly overlooked.

1. Seaside amusement park

The seaside amusement park which appears several times in the movie is a metaphor for Harry’s carefree youth. Harry wants to realize his dream life with Marion while having fun, without any effort or pain.

The film opens with a sequence of Harry and Tarone wheeling a television that is robbed from harry’s mother to the pawn shop. They pass by a seaside amusement park, with Ferris wheels, roller coasters, and red towers in the background, along with a pier that stretches out into the sea. We see the seaside amusement park again when Harry and his girlfriend Marion fly the paper planes on the roof of a tall building. The paper plane flies towards the pier, with the seaside amusement park in the background.

The third time is in Harry’s hallucination. After doing drugs, Harry gets high and sees hallucinations: With the blue and white clouds in the background, and Marion in a red dress at the end of the pier, Harry runs toward Marion and calls Marion's name. Marion turns and smiles at Harry. The amusement park (the Red Tower) is right behind Harry.

The seaside amusement park is a metaphor for Harry’s carefree youth, while Marion standing on the pier that extends into the sea is his dream. Marion turns around and smiles at Harry when everything seems perfect and within reach.

But at the end of the film, after the amputation of his arm, Harry has a dream which is almost the same as his hallucination, with the tower of the amusement park behind him, and Marion in a red dress in the front. However, Marion disappears when harry reaches her. Harry’s perplexed and steps backward, but only to fall into the abyss. With Marion gone, Harry's dream vanishes into thin air. He steps backward, but also can not return to his carefree youth, only to fall into endless despair and suffering.

2. Metaphors related to Sara

The struggle and the downward spiral of Harry’s mother Sara are depicted most boldly and brutally. This should be attributed to the excellent performance of Ellen Burstyn in the first place, and then a lot of surreal directorial choices with metaphors also contribute to it.

Let’s start with Sara's red dress which is hard for anyone to miss. When Sara believes she is going to be on TV， She decides to wear the same red dress she wore when she attended Harry’s graduation. But now she is too fat to wear it, so she starts taking diet pills and everything just goes out of control. The red dress is a metaphor for the life Sara once had, the time when she was young and passionate, the time when her husband was still around, and the time when her beloved son was fresh out of high school with a bright future ahead of him, not the selfish drug addict he is now. That was the time when she got people who loved her and needed her.

The red dress is the perfect metaphor for the unsustainable dream. As we also see in Harry’s hallucination, Marrion, Harry’s dream girl, wears the same red dress. All of these characters are craving for their’s unstainable dream, they would try all means whatsoever, but the dream’s unsustainable, and what’s left is only despair.

There’s also another metaphor within Sarah’s story, the refrigerator, which symbols Sara’s desire.

After Sara begins to diet, Aronofsky places the refrigerator and Sara opposite each other on the left and right sides of the picture to show the confrontation between Sara and her desire. The refrigerator symbolizes Sarah‘s desire for food at this moment. But later the refrigerator symbols all of Sara’s desires.

After a long time of being on diet, Sara gets so hungry that she’s got hallucinations: through the refrigerator door, she sees the food inside. Starting from this point, Sara starts taking diet pills, and she gradually gets addicted and overdoses. She becomes paranoid that she would hear the fridge suddenly vibrate with a piercing sound. To release her suffering, Sara gradually increases the dosage and eventually deteriorates into madness. With the refrigerator frequently rumbling to hypnotic music, Sarah hallucinates seeing herself in the TV show. She sees her alter ego along with the show host disappear from the TV and appears beside her. And then, with the light focusing on the refrigerator, it pulsates, rumbling: Feed me. The refrigerator jumps at Sara and opens its mouth and devours her at last.

The refrigerator is a metaphor for Sara’s desire that eventually devours her. As her desire grows and grows with the overdosing on diet pills, Sara eventually deteriorates into total insanity and strays on the streets in winter looking for a Madison Avenue TV station.

3. Addiction

Within Sara’s story, we see the genesis of addiction while other characters are already deeply addicted. Sara’s depressed because she’s old and lonely, with her husband dead, and her son is a thief who keeps robbing furniture from her to pawn. Sara does not feel loved or needed anymore.

As Sara says in her word when Harry visits his mother. To be on television means everything to her.

Sara Goldfarb: I'm somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they'll all like me. I'll tell them about you, and your father, how good he was to us. Remember? It's a reason to get up in the morning. It's a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It's a reason to smile. It makes tomorrow all right. What have I got Harry, hm? Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I'm alone. Your father's gone, you're gone. I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I'm lonely. I'm old.

Sara is old and lonely. She’s depressed without a purpose in life. And to release the distress of her own tragic life, she would eat sweet food all the time for the dopamine it generates which is the beginning of her addiction and also the reason she’s got fat.

Things will never go exactly the way people want since everything in the universe changes all the time. It’s a simple truth about the universe. But people can hardly accept it. When things don’t go the way people wanted, despite knowing it's normal and getting used to it, people get angry and depressed. There are always pains in life, but if people hold on to their pain and the things that they can’t control, their life is depressed and will never move on, which in return gives them a reason to indulge and hide from the real problems in life. For Harry, it’s not being successful after graduation, and being a burden to her mother. For Marrion, it’s the lack of love from her parents. And for Tyrone, it’s craving for love and people who cherish him, while in real life, his mother’s gone, and he’s got no one.

To release the pain in life, people turn to means to feel better, dopamine first, with food and indulging in sexual pleasures. What’s worse is alcohol and drugs which could destroy people’s life for good. Drug addicts feel amazing after the use of drugs. But the feeling is unsustainable, just like their dreams. When the amazing feeling fades, they don't feel right. Then they have to keep doing drugs to feel right. Eventually, their lives spiral down to self-destruction.

4. Cuddle up like a baby

After Marion prostitutes herself due to drug addiction, Marion cuddles up naked like a baby in a bathtub. With a close-up of her face with soft light, she looks beautiful and peaceful. Suddenly, she screams.

In the climactic finale Montage, the camera cuts rapidly between the four, Harry in amputation surgery, Marion in the ass-to-ass sex position with men watching, Tarone in jail, and Sarah in electroshock therapy, as the lights flicker and vibrate to the rhythm of the music, everyone falls into the abyss of self-destruction. With Marion literally being fucked in ass-to- ass position, all four are fucked by life and by their desires. All of their mouths are stuffed: an oxygen tube in Harry's mouth, money in Marion's mouth, Tarone’s vomiting, and braces in Sara's mouth. If Marion screams in the water before, indicating that she’s still got a conscience trying to fight her desire, then with the mouths of the four all blocked at this time, they are totally out of conscience and the ability to express themselves. Now they are completely controlled by their desires. Finally, all four of them cuddle up on the bed like babies. Lying to themself with dreams that are unreachable, they find a peaceful moment.

Watch the final scene here:

To feel better, people will lie to themselves, and ignore what’s really going on with life. You keep telling yourself that everything is going to be alright, and in the end, everything will work out well, but it’s just self-hypothesis, things are not going to work out, since you are not doing anything right to work things out. Self-hypothesis will not help. The hypothesis with indulging in sexual pleasures, alcohol, or drugs won’t help. Instead, the only thing it brings is self-destruction.

The whole film is just like what Sara articulated at the beginning of the film.

“This isn’t happening, and if it’s happening, It would be alright. So don’t worry, Seymour. It’ll all work out. You’ll see already, In the end, it’s all nice.”